Rarotonga Part 3: Animals

I would not have anticipated it, but local animals were a big part of what we loved about Rarotonga. They were usually friendly, often adorable, and always entertaining. There were many dogs and cats around, especially on the beach. They didn't seem to belong to anyone, but they also looked well-fed and quite pleased with their lives on the beach, so it must work out. Add to that the native and tropical creatures, and it was fabulous.

J made friends with this cat at one of the beach restaurants we went to. Or at least, he thought they were friends. I'm pretty sure the cat just knew a sucker when he saw one, and plopped down in the chair, confident she was about to get a free meal. She serenely ignored J's many assertions that he wouldn't pet her until she jumped down from the chair, which was clearly the right decision, as he completely caved.

No one, least of all the cat, was surprised when he also then caved on his resolution not to give her any food. J is not usually much of a push-over, but cats are his weakness.

This is not an impressive picture of this enormous crab, but I couldn't resist including it. That narrow hole is at least ten feet through solid rock with ocean underneath, and I found it at the end of our quad tour. Everyone came over to look, and even the local tour guide said he'd never seen a crab that big. Can you see it? It's on the lowest curve of the hole in the picture, and it's got red legs and a purple-ish body. 

Here is an up close image (thanks, Google) of what it looked like, although I'm not sure I found exactly the right kind. But that's the basic idea.

Speaking of crabs, we rescued this little guy from the tiled outdoor area of our hotel's restaurant, worried that she might be stepped on. We were entertained by the rather devious-looking smiley face on her back.

Little did we know, they do a Crab Race event as one of their activities, where they let go lots of hermit crabs and see which one gets to the outside of the rope circle first. It started just a few minutes after we saved our crab, and we were a bit concerned for the crabs' welfare. People were pretty nice about picking them up and putting them back in the bucket when they were done, and we were mostly willing to see it as pretty nonthreatening. But then they did it again, and this time they also had little crabs like the one we'd saved, and they run much faster than hermit crabs. 

This meant that they ran further away from the rope circle and up through the restaurant, and then ran into stairs and couldn't figure out where to go. Meanwhile, people are walking around and eating their dinner, and the crabs' shells are not hard enough to protect them from getting stepped on on stone tiles.

The waiting staff were mostly careful and gently nudged the crabs away, and I only saw one get stepped on, but I, and many of the children, were very concerned for their safety. The Crab Race coordinator said they would find their own way back to the beach, but we weren't convinced, and another man showed us how to pick them up without hurting them or being pinched, so we went to work saving them. One boy, about 9 years old, was particularly determined, and we started chatting as we went back and forth with our rescued crabs. He told me how scared they must be, especially as they probably knew that people here love to eat seafood. Then, as we were finishing, he said, "You notice how it's only children who are helping? That's because when they grow up, they'll get used to stuff like this." I try not to get too worked up over tragedies like this one (so that I can continue to function), but when he said that I only just managed not to burst into tears and freak the poor kid out. Maybe it's naive of me, but I think people of all ages should care about tiny crabs. 

On a much less heartbreaking note, this was my favourite of the many wandering chickens we met on the island. Look at the beautiful colours and patterns on her feathers! She was hoping I was a pushover like J and would share my fries, but despite the impressive power of her stare (she's glaring at my fries in this picture), I did not cave.

There were also a great many beautiful roosters around the island. A local lady we met told us that they don't belong to anyone, so if you catch one, you can keep it. We decided not to try.

It's hard to see, due to great camouflage, but right in the middle of this branch is a native lizard called a moko. Its tail is up, and its head is down. Click on the picture to make it bigger if that helps.

We also saw one enjoying the warmth inside this light on a cooler night. It was great to watch him crawling around in there!

One day, while J was taking a nap and I was on our balcony, I saw this beautiful little cat wandering around the garden. He was obviously young and enjoying exploring, trying climbing various plants and jumping on everything. I took this picture to show to J, knowing he'd fall in love.

Then, out of nowhere, a bigger cat came and attacked him! It got him on his back and fur was flying everywhere, and then he got away and bolted full speed up a towering coconut tree! Can you see him way up there? As soon as he got to the top, he looked down and got worried, meowing piteously and looking around for a way down. I woke J up, and then went to the bottom of the tree while J got dressed to come help. I tried calling the cat to climb down, and while he ignored me, a hotel worker heard me and called him by name (Charlie). He must have known her voice, because he started edging slowly down. I stayed under in case he fell, but he did very well and got all the way down by the time J got there. He was limping a little when he ran away, but we think it might have been muscle fatigue rather than injury. Poor little guy! 

This beautiful lady was my best buddy in Rarotonga. She reminded both J and I of our dog, Holly, both in the shape of her face and in her personality, which was friendly and affectionate. And isn't she gorgeous!?

She accompanied me on many of my beach walks, and was as fascinated as I was by the many delights to be found in the shallow water. Also, I don't think I've ever seen a corgi-lab mix, which is what we think she was, and so her short legs were continually surprising and adorable.

One day I found her looking like she'd fallen asleep halfway through digging a hole in the sand.

Another day, I found a bit of shade behind a rock and laid down to relax, and she came and laid her head on my hand and went to sleep. I think we might be soul-mates. When we went snorkeling later on and I left my towel on the beach, she sat next to it the whole time we were in the water, and was there waiting for cuddles when we got back. It made us really miss Holly, but it was so nice!

So, speaking of the delights to be found in shallow water, check out this sea snake I found. And by found, I mean almost stepped on and then almost knocked over my dog friend jumping out of the water when I saw it. It was surprisingly unfazed by this, and hung out for a while so I could admire it and show it to some other explorers.

That same day, being much more careful of where I stepped, I also spotted this eel, and was just fast enough to snap a picture before it hid. It was quite cool, though.

We also saw lots of impressively vivid blue starfish. This was one of the smaller ones, as the bigger ones were further out, where I didn't take my phone. They were all stunning.

Here concludes my pictures of animals, and I again have Google to thank for the rest of these pictures. We didn't take or buy any form of underwater camera, but these photos are probably better than what we could have taken anyway. We learned that we know almost nothing about the names of tropical fish, but by combining our memories and Googling abilities when we got back, I believe that we now have names and pictures for our most frequent and/or favourite fish we saw while snorkeling. We also know almost nothing about them, and this post in unreasonably long already, so I'm mostly just going to share their names.

Bicolour Parrotfish

Bluefish Trevally (assumedly related to the Giant Trevally we saw)

Butterfly Fish (two of these were best friends with J and followed him around for an entire snorkeling session)

Lion Fish (very poisonous - we didn't see them while snorkeling, but in tide pools in the barrier reef)

Lagoon Trigger Fish (I loved these because we saw babies and parents and they were exact replicas of each other, just differing in size)

Box Fish

Sea cucumber (not exciting, but we saw about a million, so they should be included)

I would apologize for this post becoming so very long, but I can't, because looking at amazing animals never gets old. You're just lucky I didn't also include a million pictures of our dragons (Guinea pigs). But don't worry, you'll get more posts about them in due time. More on Rarotonga next week, though.

Rarotonga Part 2: Adventures

Now that you know a bit about Rarotonga, you'll hopefully understand that anything you can do in such a beautiful, relaxing place is lots of fun. We therefore planned to have a nice balance of interesting or adventurous activities and pure relaxation. This meant that we could enjoy the downtime without feeling like we were missing out on experiences, and be well rested and energetic for the excursions. It worked out great. In this post, I'll share some of the more adventurous things we did.

We decided to learn to make Ei Katu (flower garlands), and the teacher sent us out to pick lots of beautiful flowers with which to make them.

J was an excellent ei katu weaver.

This was on our first day, and it made us feel very islandy. Many native Rarotongans make and wear these every day, or make/buy ones with fake flowers so that they'll last. They are quite an important part of their traditional (and current) garb.

I felt amazing in my ei katu, and would have been quite pleased to keep wearing it forever.

We had originally planned to rent scooters (little motorbikes, not the ones you push with your foot), as they are very popular and we thought it would be fun. However, it turned out to be a hassle to get them, and I am categorically opposed to spending a tropical holiday standing in lines, so we decided to get bicycles instead. You'll notice J doesn't look hugely thrilled on his bike, but that's a "Why do we need a picture of this?" look, not a "I don't like bikes" look. We actually had quite a fabulous time on our rental bikes.

How could you not have an amazing time biking here? One day, we biked the entire 32km (20 miles) around the island, taking our time and stopping often to see beautiful places, to go snorkeling, or to get some food. 32km is quite a long way, but unlike my daily 13km bike ride, which is all up and down serious hills, this was all just above sea level, and therefore completely flat. It's amazing how much less work that is! We were very tired at the end, but it was a great day!

This is one of the places we snorkeled. We saw an amazing number and variety of tropical fish, which I will talk about in a different post. I learned, however, that I am not actually skilled at snorkeling. I get the strap caught in my hair and then manage to get stinging sea water in my eye as I try to untangle it, which I have to do every few minutes because I can't figure out how to unfog my constantly foggy mask without taking it all the way off. Plus, every time we went I manage to scrape or cut my legs on rocks or coral, and my body is completely incapable of coping with even slightly cold water without shaking like a leaf, so by the end of a snorkeling session I am basically nonfunctional until the sun bakes me back to a reasonable temperature. What a mess. Meanwhile, J, who professed to not enjoying snorkeling, had no problems and peacefully bonded with the fish, who loved him. Luckily, I still managed to enjoy the experience, which says a lot about how amazing it was, that it could balance out all that.

I somewhat redeemed myself by being, apparently, a natural paddle boarder. Don't get too excited, as I believe the crux of the issue is that I am small and don't weigh enough to tip the massive board over if I wanted to, but I'm still taking credit. More importantly, we discovered that paddle boarding in a lagoon is very fun! It was so serene, and almost like walking on water. We admired coral as we paddled over it, and went out to the tiny island in this picture, as well as to a slightly bigger one in the same lagoon. Unfortunately, J hit a rock in the shallows and fell onto another rock, cutting and bruising his foot. But other than that, it was a gorgeous experience.

On Saturday, we went to the Punanga Nui Market in Avarua, the capital city of the Cook Islands. It is a huge, beautiful, interesting market with lots of locally made items and some delicious food. J got a beautiful shirt and a new sarong, and I got some amazing pearl shell earrings.

That afternoon, we went on the Raro Reef Sub, which is a boat that has a lower level with windows you can look out under the water. These fish are giant trevally, which come whenever they see the reef sub going by, as they know they'll get some food. They can get up to 80kg (176lbs), although the ones we were seeing were closer to 40-50kg (88-110lbs), which is still enormous!

I watched them from underneath on the way out, but on the way back, I looked from the top, where you got a clearer idea of their frenzy to get the chunks of meat the tour guide threw out to them. 

Unfortunately, visibility under the water wasn't great the day we went out, but I still got some nice glimpses of the reef. We also went around a shipwreck, which was quite cool, although my pictures didn't turn out.

It was also lovely just to be out on the water, admiring the beautiful ocean and views back towards the island. I love being on a boat, and they even let me sit up in the prow for a while to have some quiet time admiring the waves. (J gets seasick, so he was mostly focusing on not being unwell, which he mostly accomplished. And see how nice he looks in his new shirt?)

On our last day, we went on a Jungle Quad Adventure, which was fantastic. I've never driven a quad before, although I remember loving riding on the back of them in Canada when I was a kid. J also enjoyed them when he was little, but this was his first adult quad experience. It was so fun to zoom along the trails through the lush jungle.

We even got to zoom through some pretty fantastic muddy puddles. I love that you can't even see my bike!

J was a bit hesitant about this level of mud at the beginning, but then he got into it. Amazingly, though, the mud flew all over the place, but not much of it actually landed on us. Must be the shape of the front of the quad or something, because it seems like we should have been soaked, but we weren't.

We stopped and looked around in several different jungle locations, all of which were beautiful. I particularly loved the plants with the huge leaves, which you can see in the bottom left. It's hard to understand how incredibly huge they are, as I never did find a good opportunity to have something for scale next to them. They were amazing! This picture is up by a reservoir that catches and filters rain water through rocks. This water then continues down the mountain (and we think through further filtration) and eventually ends up in a little town where people can fill up containers to use it for drinking water. This is important, as tap water in Rarotonga is not safe for drinking.

I feel like I have not truly done justice to the delight we took in our adventures, but hopefully you can get a bit of a sense of it through the pictures. More next week on stunning Rarotonga.

Rarotonga Part 1: Welcome to the Island

Sorry for not posting last week - I fully intended to post a quick note saying we were on holiday in Rarotonga, but then I slipped into full island relaxation mode and did no such thing. Oops.

As is usually true for our trips, I'll break this into several posts. I feel like I could write fairly unlimited posts about this particular holiday, but I'll try to be reasonable.

Before I get started on our experiences, I'll give a little background on Rarotonga. It is one of the Cook Islands, of which there are 15. I didn't realize this until we were leaving, as people here just call it Rarotonga. I also learned, as I talked to people about going there, that a staggering number of Kiwis have been there. As in, the vast majority of the people I mentioned it to had been there multiple times. Apparently, it was one of the first pacific islands you could easily fly to, and it continues to be among the most popular holiday locations, as it is "only" a four hour flight from Auckland, making it one of the closest places to our isolated country. The Cook Islands are in "free association" with NZ, and they even use NZ currency there, in addition to their own Cook Island money. Even knowing this, we were still astounded to see that the plane taking us to this tiny island was as big as the ones we take back to the States. The entire island is only 32km around, and the total population is around 10,500. It felt like we were bringing more people than would be able to fit onto the island! There were tourists from other places there as well, but the majority of the visitors we met were from NZ.

Anyway, Rarotonga is the biggest and most populace Cook Island, and is also the seat of the capital, Avarua. The islands are extremely spread out, with the furthest one actually being further away from Rarotonga than NZ is. Their native language is Cook Island Māori, which has a lot of similarities with NZ Māori. Their are some similarities in culture as well, although they have their own unique and rich traditions and ways of life. We had some small glimpses of this during our time there, which I will write more about in future posts.

This was our first view of Rarotonga from the airplane. How exciting! You'll notice the line a little way out into the water - that is the reef, which is where the big ocean waves break, and it creates a lagoon inside it where the water is quite calm and there is lots of amazing sea life.

I got this picture of Rarotonga from Google Earth to better illustrate the lagoon. I had always thought that a lagoon was standing water separated from anything bigger (like the ocean), but apparently it includes water protected by a reef. To the northeast, there is little to no lagoon, so we were instructed not to swim there, and also to avoid the places in the south where you can see what look like dark rivers; these are strong, dangerous currents. But otherwise, there is an abundance of beautiful places to swim and observe the amazing ecosystem.

This is not actually about Rarotonga, but look how amazing the shadow of our plane was, encircled by a stunning rainbow!

Once we landed, we saw the rich, verdant forest on the hills in the middle of the island. The highest point of this volcanic island is 4,500 metres (14,750 feet) above the sea floor, which is 658 metres (2,140 feet) above sea level . The vast majority of people live around the edge of the island. There is one main road that circles the whole island, and almost everything is close to that.

Coconut trees are everywhere and are central to many aspects of island life. As we explored different locations, we often noticed huge leaves wrapped and woven around other trees or around posts and support beams in buildings. It was very beautiful.

This is the view from the balcony of our hotel room - just one of many, many gardens we admired while we were there. The temperature stays between 21 and 30C (70 and 85F) year round, only getting down into those lower temperatures at night, as I understand it. It is their winter now, as it is for us in NZ, and it was at least 24C (75F) every day, and usually warmer. Apparently, the biggest difference between summer and winter is that in summer, they regularly have 90%-100% humidity, which turns lovely and warm into uncomfortably sticky. During our visit, the climate was impressively perfect.

All around the island are stunning white sand beaches with luminous water. I never get tired of admiring the ocean.

If you look closely, you'll notice a school of little silver fish. I didn't get any pictures of the many more colourful tropical fish, but it was amazing how many fish you could see even from the beach, let alone snorkeling, which we did lots of and which was incredible.

The view from the other side of our hotel room was up towards the middle of the island.

The beaches (of which I'll post lots more pictures) were fascinating. Because there is lots of coral living in various places the lagoon, there is lots of old, dead coral washed up on the beach, and it varies depending on what's in the ocean, making each stretch unique and interesting.

I felt like every picture I took could go on a postcard.

Did I mention how lush and green the interior was? It is truly amazing.

There were also black volcanic rocks in many places around the island, which was a beautifully contrasting compliment to the white sand.

  

There was also pockmarked and jagged volcanic rock, in contrast to the smooth formations in the picture above. For such a small island, there was incredible variety in the landscape, and we had a great time exploring.

Okay, hopefully that gives you a bit of context. I'm still getting my many, many pictures organized, but I'll use the next few posts to focus in on various aspects of our amazing time in this beautiful place.